Feeling really discouraged

Hey everyone :) I guess I’m just looking for some encouragement?

This is my second attempt to learn to drive - first attempt was back in 2019 where I did 4 hours in a manual before giving up because everything was super overwhelming. This time I’m learning automatic, and while I am finding it easier now that I don’t have to worry about gears, I still feel very overwhelmed. If it’s worth anything, I’m 100% certain that I have adhd and am likely also autistic, though I haven’t got around to getting a diagnosis of either yet.

I’ve had 9 hours of lessons so far this time and I think I’ve covered a fair amount, although I know there is still a lot to cover. I’ve done lots of different roundabouts, busy roads, rush hour, driving in the dark, semi rural roads, traffic lights, pedestrian crossings, dual carriageways etc. I’ve only done one manoeuvre so far - reverse bay parking, but that actually went a lot better than I thought it would.

I had my 5th lesson yesterday, and I feel like it went so horribly and I actually ended up crying as soon as I got home. I was feeling semi confident after the surprising success of reverse bay parking on my previous lesson so we decided to go for a longer drive to the town where my closest test centre is (around 35-40 mins each way) but pretty much as soon as I started driving, I felt like I had just forgotten everything. My lane positioning was all over the place, I kept steering too late and/or oversteering, kept doing roundabouts too fast, kept forgetting to check my mirrors, wasn’t braking fast enough at traffic lights when they changed so my instructor had to brake a few times for me, was always too far under the speed limit so kept getting told I needed to speed up, the list could go on and on. By the end of my lesson I was a nervous wreck, I was so scared and have now lost all confidence. I feel like I did when I quit last time.

If that wasn’t bad enough, at the end of my lesson, my instructor pretty much called me mentally slow (different wording but the message was clear), saying that it seems to take me a long time to react to things happening on the road and to him telling me what to do, and that it’s going to take a long time to teach me as it’s been difficult teaching other people like me. I don’t think I’m that slow to react tbh, but maybe I am? He’s been super nice in all of my other lessons so that was pretty surprising to hear from him. I’d look for another instructor but no one else seems to have any availability right now and I know if I stop my lessons then it’ll probably be another 5 years before I pick them up again.

If you’ve made it to the end then thank you for reading my whole brain dump, I didn’t expect this to be so long.